Dominique Strauss-Kahn film begins shooting in New York

A film starring Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Adjani joins a string of projects inspired by the sex scandal

LAST UPDATED AT 13:50 ON Fri 31 Aug 2012

A FILM about the sex scandal of former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn is due to start shooting in New York. It will feature French stars Gerard Depardieu as DSK and Isabelle Adjani (pictured) as his journalist wife Anne Sinclair. The film, by the US director of Bad Lieutenant, Abel Ferrara, follows a flurry of creative projects including books, TV shows and plays 'inspired' by the now infamous Strauss-Kahn.

DSK, a one-time Socialist party presidential hopeful, fell from grace following his arrest in New York last year over the alleged attempted rape of an immigrant hotel worker, Nafissatou Diallo. Charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence, but DSK subsequently became embroiled in a scandal at home over pimping prostitutes for orgies in Lille.

The Guardian reports that neither the script nor the title for Ferrara's film has been finalised, but shooting is set to commence in New York and Paris.

Depardieu told Swiss television: "I'm going to play Dominique Strauss-Kahn because I don't like him." He said the Socialist was "arrogant", "unlikeable" and therefore possible to play.

Isabelle Adjani told Le Journal du Dimanche the film will be about a besieged "couple in torment". Adjani said she was excited about the project because the director isn't French and "there's no risk of political correctness".

Elsewhere authors and playwrights have enthusiastically tackled the downfall of DSK. Last month, L'Affaire, a play about a sex-obsessed man who "climbs to the highest office" only to experience "the horror of the fall" premiered in Paris, while a book by senior Le Monde journalists exploring DSK's sexual and political exploits has been a bestseller this summer.

In the US, the case inspired a bestselling thriller (Night Watch) by a former New York sex crimes investigator, and an episode of US TV series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

But the relentless glare of the spotlight appears to have finally become too much for the DSK/Sinclair relationship. The famously private Sinclair confirmed she had split from her husband in an interview with Le Journal Du Dimanche this week.